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Speaking of support, thank you! to
David Levin, Ledas Group
Jean Haney, Visual Integrity
With this issue of WorldCAD Access, I’m taking a break for the summer, and plan to return with the newsletter in early September.
I have also observed this proliferation of GitHub projects in the AEC world. Some of them are really great ideas, most require a lot of effort to get them working and are just POCs [proof of concepts].
Many job applications now require you to list your GitHub projects, and I wonder if the existence of one or more projects is enough to make the cut and not so much the quality of the projects.
- Biplab Sarkar
The editor replies: That is a pretty interesting theory. It would explain the many, many text-to-render projects out there.
The token cost [of running AI] is a real problem. I have an open-source engineering project, and while I’m not getting paid and am giving it away free, it is $200/month to do this.
To bring this back to CAD, that will be the cost there, too — if someone gets beyond creating more than simple parts.
- Mark Burhop
Oleg Shilovitsky replies: Apple demo’ed the strategy of local model last week. Would it be an alternative?
Mark Burhop relies: Not the low-end ones. I have a couple on my Dell GB10 I use to drive Onshape and it has 128GB. The high-end ones from Anthropic, OpenAI, and Gemini do better and are faster. But let’s remember AI is not static. Maybe it will be great next year.
There’s also product-specific CAD when the size of the item can be decided by the user. Inside dimensions or outside dimensions. Think inside and outside the box! See https://boxes-rho.vercel.app.
- Alan Grant
I would like to publish this article in German on my website: https://cad-markt.de/index.php/cad-blog/technik. Could you grant permission for that?
- Michael
The editor replies: You have my permission to publish “Experimental CAD Is Exploding All Over” on your Web site. Please include a link to my original article on Substack.
Is there any truth to the rumour that Microsoft and Autodesk had an agreement that as long as Autodesk stayed Windows-only, Microsoft would stay out of the CAD business? In order to acquire Visio, IntelliCAD had to go somewhere else.
- Peter Ollson
The editor replies: An IntelliCAD insider once told me that getting rid of IntelliCAD was a condition of Microsoft buying Visio. I don’t know about the quid pro quo with Autodesk, as Microsoft would have been, in my opinion, helpless at writing and selling CAD.
I had a hunch Visio was losing interest in IntelliCAD, when earlier that year the company held a Visual Basic conference, at which IntelliCAD would not be at. Sometimes, the absence of information is information.
I thought you’d like to hear some of the old CAD war stories of shortsighted clients.
A client who created slides (remember those?) by taking photographs of the screen running AutoCAD. I showed them an early graphic arts application in which I placed one of their drawings in full color over a black background and even included the logo. They told me that, yes, it was better-looking and cheaper, but they’d have to learn Windows, and they weren’t going to do that.
Another client used a logo on their title block made of white text on a black background. In those days, that took up a lot of drawing space. They filled up a hard drive in a matter of weeks. I told them they needed to update the title block, and they said the CAD system would go first before they changed the title block.
I showed another client a very early 3D renderer. They said they used their computer for quality plans, and if they wanted to play with their Nintendos, they would bring those in. Later, I spoke to some of the younger architects, who said that when younger firms started using this technology to the fullest and taking jobs away, then they’d come back and talk to me.
I predicted years ago that architectural visualizations would be based on game technology. I recently had an architect agree that I was right, way ahead of time, and firms that listened were ahead of the curve.
Such was life in the early days. I’m kind of glad I saved my sanity and got out of it.
- Dave Edwards
The editor replies: At an engineering firm I worked, a local dealer demo’ed AutoCAD to us, but the execs decided against adopting CAD, as it would have required a hard drive. True, hard drives cost as much as an entire personal computer back then in the 1980s.
Any updates on ZwSoft’s next-gen platform, any insider info? You wrote about it in upFront.eZine #1,101: “What We Know About Project Wukong” at https://upfrontezine.substack.com/p/upfrontezine-1101-what-we-know-about.
I asked ZWSoft for some details about ZWBIM and when it will be released. Here are the answers:
Q. What are the benchmark products for the new BIM product in the market?
A. BIM product R&D [research and development] is divided into a foundational platform and a BIM [building information modeling] application platform, similar to the previous relationship between the Wukong Platform and ZWSOFT BIM. The foundational platform benchmarks MicroStation, while the application platform benchmarks Bentley’s OBD (Open Building Design). Functionally, it also meets the needs of users familiar with Revit.
ZwCAD showing a BIM model (image source ZwSoft)
Q: What are the expected key highlights or differentiators of the product?
A: The product retains traditional 2D design habits while supporting compatibility with CAD ecosystem plugins, significantly reducing the learning curve and switching costs for users. It provides a new technical pathway for a seamless transition from traditional CAD design to BIM design. More detail about ZWBIM still need to wait until it release.
Maybe you have some insider info?
- Targon Tech
The editor replies: ZWBIM is not listed as a product on the ZwSoft Web site. The Wukong Project page looks to have been last updated in 2021.
A mention I found is in a 2022 press release about Capol adopting it: “ZWSOFT started Wukong Project intended to build up a high-end 3D graphics platform for large-scale engineering projects. As the first product born from Wukong Project, our BIM for civil architecture aims to provide a PLM solution for this industry.”
Read the rest at https://dailycadcam.com/zwsoft-capol-announce-joint-venture-to-provide-bim-solution-for-civil-architecture.
A 2024 conference report states “the newly developed ZWBIM that will be released in China soon.”
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